Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

The author sets the background to the flight against the birth of manned powered flight and Britain in the aftermath of the First World War. He goes on to describe the record breaking flight in detail, drawing on Alcock and Brown’s written records and their flying log book, and concludes with a round-up of the fates of all the pioneers who are mentioned in the narrative, and the flight’s legacy for Everyman. Now published as a paperback, Yesterday We Were in America is the first accurate and atmospheric account of one of the most significant and dramatic flights in history.

$12.93
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we ship the item.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Brendan Lynch is a former Grand Prix correspondent for UK and Irish media including The Observer, Daily Mail and Irish Press. As a supporter of Bertrand Russell, he was imprisoned for anti-nuclear protests in the 1960s. He has written five books, including the award-winning motor racing history Green Dust. He lives in Dublin.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Yesterday We Were in America: Alcock and Brown, First to fly the Atlantic non-stopby Brendan Lynch

"Yesterday We Were in America!" Imagine saying that at a cocktail party, or to your friends and neighbors--in 1919. This is in fact the phrase pilot Alcock kept repeating to the crew of the Marconi radio station near which he had landed, and who simply would not believe him until he produced as evidence a sealed mailbag from Newfoundland, his point of departure 1,880 miles back across the Atlantic. This is about as exotic a pronouncement as today saying "Yesterday We Were on Mars!" It was totally unprecedented. It had only been three weeks earlier that an Atlantic crossing by a US Navy flying boat, that in a pinch could have set down on the water and rendevoused with a rescue boat, had concluded--and that had taken 19 days of flying in short stages (for a total of 57:16 housrs in the air). And now Cpt John Alcock and Lt Arthur Whitten Brown had done a 1900-mile nonstop crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland, nonstop in 16 hours and in a rickety Vickers Vimy biplane at that.

We live in a world that has in the lifespan of one generation gone from horse-drawn buggy to putting a man on the moon and has seen everyday supersonic civilian air travel come and go. Been there, done that. But a newspaper reader in 1919 would have been overcome with excitement at the novelty of this flight--the longest distance traveled nonstop by man--in a world still new to mechanization in general and aviation in particular. (Recall that the war that had ended a year earlier--the Great War, World War One--had started with horses and ended with tanks!)